In a region full of hard-luck stories, Bui Thi Nhi’s is harder than most. Hobbled by a congenital leg deformity, she was married off young to a man who had been blind since childhood. For more than twenty-two years, Nhi has supported her family single-handedly, scratching out a living by raising rice on her 700 square-meter (1/6 acre) field, here in this remote part of Vietnam’s Hoa Binh province.
There is never quite enough to eat. For three to six months of each year, the family of five suffers through a rice shortage. Some years they have to borrow money for food. With jobs few and far between in Hoa Binh, raising the cash to pay their debts is a struggle.
A decade ago, the family incurred more debt for the medical bills of a nine-year-old daughter, who was suffering from a stomach ailment. Even after the girl died, they had to keep paying the loan at five percent interest.
But now Nhi’s luck is starting to turn. Recently, her family moved from their tiny thatched hut on stilts into a sturdy one room concrete dwelling next door. She welcomes a group of visitors to the month-old house, sitting on a floor mat to drink strong Vietnamese tea. Half the cost for building materials, about $400, came from a government anti-poverty program. They’ve had to borrow to pay the rest, but this time there is no worry that they’ll go hungry.
This year, with the help of CARE, Nhi has learned how to replace her rice crop with a new, hybrid variety that nearly doubles her yield, to 500 kg a season. She plans to continue improving her agricultural skills, trying new methods of cultivating fruit and corn, and enrolling in a CARE program that helps women learn to breed and sell pigs. Above all, she vows that her youngest child, nine-year-old boy Quach Van Diem, will have the education she never had.
Just then, Diem comes in from outside, draping his arms affectionately around his mother. “Even if I have to ask one of his older sisters to support him, I want him to have a better future,” says Nhi, who only finished second grade.
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